Why Small Business Needs Big Data

Big Data has been around for years. It resided in filing cabinets, floppy disks, yellow notepads, and much more. Of course, accessing this type of data with a computer system was difficult if not impossible.

As more of this information has moved to computers and grown exponentially, it has given us the opportunity to see this data like never before. According to a study by IDC, our data is currently doubling in size every two years and will reach 44 zettabytes by 2020.

Of course, large companies have been utilizing big data for a while. They use it to make decisions that, in some cases, have made them millions of dollars.

But not for small business?

Do you remember when computers first came out and they were so expensive that many small businesses only had one or two? People had to share a computer just to get their job done.

In today’s world, when hardware costs have fallen dramatically, everyone that needs computing technology, simply has it. Small businesses budget for computers and make sure their employees have the software they need. This has allowed more data to be available than ever before.

Along with declining hardware prices, the price of analytics software has gone down as well. This allows small businesses to take advantage of big data without having a big budget.

Why big data matters

While the size of big data might be important to your technical staff, ultimately the size isn’t that important. Don’t get too enamored with “big”.

The real question you should be asking is what business value are you going to get out of your data. You need to determine what data will be most relevant to your business.

Conclusion

With so many players in the big data field, you’re likely to read a lot of hype regarding the latest tools for the enterprise. It’s important to be realistic and pick a tool that is the right solution for small business.

With the right tool, and a helpful source of big data, your small business can get the same benefits as one ten times its size for a fraction of the cost.

TIBCO Spotfire’s Trends and Outliers Blog is a regular contributor to ongoing ‘Social’ dialogues, offering solutions to complex business challenges across a variety of today’s data analytics disciplines.